The digital versatile disk (DVD) has become the primary media for recording and distributing commercially produced digital audio-video entertainment, most notably movies. The DVD has a number of significant advantages over older technologies, such as video tapes. For example, DVDs are generally more compact and easier to handle, produce higher quality audio and video on playback, and provide the user more control options, including the capability of quickly jumping to selected scenes or chapters within the materials recorded on the disk.
Most commercially produced DVDs include a menu that appears on the video screen automatically upon insertion of the DVD into a DVD player. The menu typically allows the user, through an on-screen cursor, to select between various control options. For example, the menu often allows the user to select between a primary presentation or title, such as a movie, and a secondary presentation or title, such as background material related to the primary title. The menu also typically allows the user to switch to a chapter list which lists, in text form, various points in the selected title (e.g. scenes or “chapters”) to which the user can directly jump under cursor control.
Menus in commercially produced DVDs usually have a static background, such as a still picture taken from the video portion of a given title or a graphic design. Some commercial DVDs utilize animated menu backgrounds, including audio and visual effects. In either case, commercial DVD producers normally have specialized hardware and software that will allow a menu with a particular background to be generated and then reproduced on each manufactured DVD.
The advent of one-time writable and re-writable DVDs (DVD-R and DVD-R/W) has allowed for non-commercial and small-scale commercial authoring of DVDs. The input data source can be a television receiver, camcorder, another DVD or similar audio-video data source, or a personal computer. Thus, for example, a user can record television shows for later viewing or store camcorder segments in a compact, organized, and easily transportable medium.
Most DVD-R and DVD-R/W systems allow for multiple titles, such as movies, television programs, or camcorder segments, to be recorded on a single medium, as well as for each title to be partitioned into chapters. A menu of titles and chapters is then generated by the user for navigation. However, menu generation in non-commercial and other small-scale applications is still subject to significant limitations not found in more sophisticated commercial systems. Specifically, menus in small-scale applications are typically similar to the chapter lists found in commercial DVDs, with text and a limited selection of backgrounds. In particular, the options available for the menu background are typically limited to only a few static backgrounds, such as company logos or other graphics, made available by the particular manufacturer of the DVD playback-recording system.
Hence, the ability of the small-scale DVD authors to enrich their DVDs, at least with respect to the creation of customized menus, is significantly restricted. As a result, new techniques are required for recording and organizing DVDs by non-commercial and small-scale commercial authors, and in particular new techniques are required for customizing DVD menus without resort to sophisticated commercial hardware and software.